Doctor Who’s Jodie Whittaker has a plan for when the new series is released: leave the country
She can’t quite hop in the Tardis, but she’s doing the next best thing
Now that we’ve finally got an airdate for the first episode of Doctor Who’s new series it’s fair to say that fans are getting pretty excited, marking October 7 on their calendars and clearing their schedules to ensure they’re free to watch Jodie Whittaker’s big entrance to the Whoniverse.
However, it turns out that Whittaker herself is far less keen to join in the on the big day, revealing in a new interview that she’s planning to leave the country before her first episode airs.
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“[I’ll be] somewhere far away, so I don’t watch it in the same time zone,” she told Marie Claire.
“I’ll be turning my phone off and hoping for the best!”
To be fair, Whittaker’s likely to have seen the episode before it officially airs, as she previously told the Radio Times earlier this summer.
“Hopefully the first time I see it won’t be when it airs,” she joked at the time. “We’re obviously terrified of leaks, but hopefully we’ll be able to see it beforehand.”
And given the pressure of her position in Doctor Who (and the subsection of fans who objected to her becoming the first female Doctor) it’s more than understandable that she’d prefer to take a bit of a break from it all.
“[The Doctor] celebrates change more than any other role,” Whittaker responded to those fans in the new interview.
“You have a physical regeneration, so casting me supports that story and doesn’t go against the rules of the show in any way.”
Hopefully, by the end of October 7th those doubters will be as convinced as the rest of us – and if not, well, Whittaker will hopefully be too far away to know about it anyway.
Doctor Who returns to BBC1 on Sunday 7th October
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
